ghettonoun/ˈɡɛ.təʊ/

• 1

  An (often walled) area of a city in which Jews are concentrated by force and law. (Used particularly of areas in medieval Italy and in Nazi-controlled Europe.)

  • The Venetian ghetto, according to Sennett, was to provide protection from the unclean bodies of the Jews and their sullying touch. The Roman ghetto, on the other hand, was planned as an area for mission. It was supposed to collect the Jews in one place, so that it would be easier to convert them.
  • […] concentrating the Jewish community into ghettoes. The Germans not only started the ghettoes, but they had also opened a concentration camp […]
• 2

  An (often impoverished) area of a city inhabited predominantly by members of a specific nationality, ethnicity, or race.

  • Charlestown would also become one of Boston's three large Irish ghettoes.
  • By 1960 the growth and development of Chicago's black areas of residence confirmed the existence of the city's second ghetto.
• 3

  An area in which people who are distinguished by sharing something other than ethnicity concentrate or are concentrated.

  • Counterhegemonic spaces imagined as bounded territories ensure that heteronormativity is fixed beyond the borders of the gay ghetto. The rural and suburban lives of lesbian and gay people are made invisible and signified as inauthentic.
  • The student ghetto, southwest of the centre, is inside the triangle formed by [three streets] and is full of open-air bars, internet cafés, fast-food shops — and students.
• 4

  derogatoryAn isolated, self-contained, segregated subsection, area or field of interest; often of minority or specialist interest.

  • Abraham Merritt wrote for the pulps and never in his lifetime achieved critical success. Yet he had a devoted following in the science fiction ghetto who admired the clarity of his style and his power to evoke moods.
  • Invent is undoubtedly the wrong word, but the push from government was crucial in getting the Internet out of its academic ghetto.

ghettoadj/ˈɡɛ.təʊ/

• 1

  Of or relating to a ghetto or to ghettos in general.

  • Those residing in ghetto communities were particularly ill equipped to adapt to the seismic changes taking place in the U.S. economy; they were left isolated and jobless.
• 2

  slanginformalUnseemly and indecorous or of low quality; cheap; shabby, crude.

  • My apartment's so ghetto, the rats and cockroaches filed a complaint with the city!
  • I like to drive ghetto cars; if they break down you can just abandon them and pick up a new one!
• 3

  offensivederogatoryinformalCharacteristic of the style, speech, or behavior of residents of a predominantly black or other ghetto in the United States.

  • The music I liked was very ghetto and gritty. It was the stuff that didn't really cross over much, but spoke to a roots black experience. People don't understand this now, but the falsetto, crying singers were the most ghetto back then.
  • You're the one that grew up in the suburbs and you act way more ghetto than I do.” “I am not ghetto.” Val said in an English accent and broke out laughing.
• 4

  Having been raised in a ghetto in the United States.

ghettoverb/ˈɡɛ.təʊ/

• 1

  To confine (a specified group of people) to a ghetto.

  • This is, in brief, a part of the story of the ghettoing of a large segment of Denver's Negro population.
  • All African states practised racist policies. In the 1950s and 1960s, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia expelled more than a quarter of a million Jews and ghettoed the few thousand who remained. In the 1960s the United Republic of Tanzania expelled its Arabs or deprived them of equal rights.